How to Ace a Healthcare Job Interview

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When it comes to health job recruitment, a major milestone after trawling the endless vacancies on job boards like Health Jobs Nationwide is to be invited for an interview. At this point, you can congratulate yourself that your CV has sufficiently impressed recruiters and that you have met the qualifications for the job. In theory, you are now considered acceptable for the job. However, no matter how impressive your CV or qualifications, healthcare is all about effective human interaction. To this end, personality plays a massive role. Accordingly, the interview remains a major obstacle to clear – and in healthcare, the interview is never just a formality.

Making a good impression in an interview situation is all about building on your skills and qualifications and proving that you have that vital extra component to be suitable for the job. Furthermore, your bearing in the interview and how you interact with the interviewers is just as (if not more) important than how you actually respond to the questions. Within healthcare, in other words, you really need to ace the interview.

Tips for Acing the Interview

How do you actually go about that, though? What are the most important things to get right? Here follows a list of tips based upon years of healthcare interviewing and specifics of the process. Cover these bases and you will at least be in with a sporting chance.

Be Punctual

Of course, this particular tip is vitally important for any type of interview, not just healthcare. Turning up on time shows you respect the interviewer’s time and schedule. It might sound like an obvious tip, but there is a little more to it than simply remembering to be there on time. This is because sometimes events outside your control can make you late. For example, a huge pile up on the highway or a family emergency. In such cases, communication is everything. You can ameliorate the damage done by your tardiness with clear communication. As a final point, a great rule of thumb is to be early for an interview. This shows a degree of diligence and planning, which interviewers will respect.

Dress Well

Dressing well is another general tip. Nevertheless, dressing well is pretty important. Of course, for many healthcare roles, you will not be wearing anything like your interview suit when on the job but dressing up for an interview isn’t really about this anyway. Rather, its again about showing your commitment to preparation for the interview. Just like showing up early, making sure you have your best interview suit on shows diligence and commitment.

Interact Well

There is a lot to be said for being polite in an interview, but that is only half the battle. Rather, what interviewers want to see is a degree of human connection, which is so vital in healthcare. You should come across not only polite but eager, friendly, and energetic. Accordingly, be sure to smile and make eye contact. You don’t want to be pushy but being retiring and shy can give the wrong impression.

Read the Room

This final tip is perhaps the trickiest to pull off and it again involves human interaction. You should be able to interact with the interviewers in a way that isn’t a strict formula but shows you reacting to how they are behaving too. Judge the reaction to everything you say and let that inform how you behave next. In this way, you can control the general trajectory of the interview.

Usually, the interview is the last obstacle to clear before you can secure the job. This makes it all-important. Do not fall at the very last hurdle.